It wasn’t quite the same with Roni or Clena. Roni was slim, but still had a shapely and feminine figure, so I got a bit embarrassed whenever I washed her hair. Clena, on the other hand, made my breathing go wild. Frankly, her figure was several steps above any of the other girls’.
In contrast, Rium and Rakti soothed me. I wanted to pet them on their heads forever.
“Let’s get in the bath now.”
Rium nodded softly, then took my hand and headed to the cedar bathtub where Clena, Roni, and Rakti were waiting.
A few hours after we cleaned ourselves, we changed into our formal wear and gained an audience with the Hephaestus royal palace. Though my “formal wear” was simply my Magic Eater armor while I held the helmet under my armpit, an extravagant ceremonial mantle, and a sash across my chest. I didn’t bring any weapons, of course.
I wondered if this was okay since I could still use magic, but the king himself had commanded it, so we didn’t need to question it any further. He was as broad-minded of a fellow as always.
A large crowd had gathered to take a look at the ceremony, and they greeted us with a thunderous applause as soon as we stepped into view. I was getting stage fright. I took one step at a time, making sure to not fall over or swing my arms in tune with the wrong leg.
Rulitora was wearing his dragon bone armor. Its most impressive feature was the exaggerated shape of its left arm, made from the long jaw of the dragon’s skull. He didn’t have the spikes from the giant scorpion armor anymore, but he looked even more menacing now. He had a dignified look with his head held high, but I could still see a hint of nervousness in his expression, probably because he wasn’t used to this either.
Clena’s dragon scale armor was beautiful enough to be mistaken for jewelry. But those were dragon’s scales—the armor wasn’t just for show. It had been signed and certified by Pardoe and Shakova.
Roni’s brand new red lizard skin armor might have been commonplace in Hephaestusopolis, but we had gotten a skilled craftsman to tailor it, so it was an impressive piece as well. The leather armor that adorned her chest was neither too plain nor too gaudy, and was top-notch in terms of defensive abilities as well. Both Clena and Roni stood composed, maybe because they were used to this sort of situation.
Rium and Rakti didn’t wear armor on a regular basis, so we prepared adorable dresses for them for the occasion. They both looked splendid. The dresses would just become luggage after this since we’d rarely come across the opportunity to take them out, but they’d be fine inside the Unlimited Bath. They couldn’t wear them right now, but of course we picked out dresses as gifts for Clena and Roni as well. Roni had gotten incredibly flustered, but accepted the gift as a token of my appreciation.
Rium was acting coolly, entirely unaffected by the scene, but Rakti looked anxious and kept glancing around her. She was the most inexperienced of all of us with these situations.
Following us were Pardoe, Shakova, and Mark, who had all helped us during the expedition. The three of them were wrapped in what looked like togas from ancient Rome. Pardoe and Shakova were unsurprisingly acting no different from usual.
Crissa was waving at them from the audience. She was being a little more audacious than usual since it was her little brother’s big moment.
Mark was covering his face shyly. He wasn’t nervous, but rather embarrassed about Crissa’s behavior.
We walked forward until we were in front of Hephaestus XIV. He didn’t look stiff at all with his usual beaming smile. The butterflies in my stomach flew away after I saw him. In fact, I felt silly about being nervous in the first place. I was thankful for his personality at that moment.
“Hero Touya! We thank you for your courageous deeds on this occasion!”
We had already gone over the order of events in the ceremony, so the king proceeded to present me the medals without delay.
I would be awarded three medals today. The medals were simply an easy way to recognize certain achievements, so they weren’t my reward by themselves. Though I’d heard these medals were worth quite a bit on their own.
The actual reward consisted of various treasures and a lump sum of cash, but I would just be handed a certificate for now. The audience wouldn’t get too excited about the money—or rather, they’d just get envious instead.
Back on topic, the first was the Volcano Warrior medal. The medal depicted a relief of a ketolt holding a sword, and was granted to those who achieved many merits within Hephaestus. Apparently the ketolt in the relief was the first king of the old Hephaestus royal family.
They were recognizing us for the expedition that uncovered the demon general’s hideout, which had troubled the kingdom for many years. The medal was given not just to me, but to everyone who had participated in the expedition.
The second was the Slayer medal. This was awarded to anyone who successfully defeated a powerful monster, and depicted two dragons wrapped around a sword. The design on the medal changed depending on the type of monster you defeated. I suppose this one could be called the Dragon Slayer medal.
Third was the Golden Cat Ears medal. This one was a cute medal in the shape of a cat’s head. It was granted to anyone the old royal family, or the twelve families, deemed worthy. It was proof that the twelve families accepted you and a pledge that they would offer assistance in times of need. It was probably thanks to this medal that Pardoe and Shakova could join our journey.
I took my award certificate, had the three medals pinned to my sash, and turned around to the audience, who offered loud cheers. It almost felt like the entire room was rumbling. I wondered if Haruno had gone through something similar when she received her medal.
Maybe I had caught up to Haruno now. I felt a little proud thinking that. I kept my chest held high and walked into the sea of cheers with a confident expression.
Bath Break – Mew Mew Quest
“This kitchen knife is sharper than Father’s.”
“What did you say just meow...?”
It all started from Crissa’s one remark...
Let’s go back to when the ketolts requested to sleep inside the Unlimited Bath one night before setting off on their journey.
That in itself wasn’t a problem. They needed to be prepared, so they conducted a test night inside the Bath. However, a series of events was triggered after Pardoe heard his daughter’s idle murmur from the kitchen.
She had a kitchen knife from the Unlimited Bath in her paws. Just like the soap in the bath, it was formed from the Hero of the Goddess, Touya’s, MP. Crissa wasn’t a blacksmith, but she could discern the quality of a kitchen knife after having used them quite often. Pardoe couldn’t ignore his own daughter’s words, so he took the knife into his own paws and inspected it himself.
“Murrr... Indeed...”
The blade was thinner and lighter compared to the ones Pardoe made. He tried cutting some vegetables and also confirmed that it cut much more smoothly than his blades did.
“Wh-what is this knife...?”
Then Shakova and Mark entered the kitchen, peering at the knife in Pardoe’s paws.
“What a purrfectly constructed blade...” Shakova rarely ever made or used cookware, but he regretted missing out on this particular one until now. The blade had a beautiful sheen, but the handle helped give it an even more refined look.
“...So what’s this knife made of?” Mark muttered, poking the side of the blade with a claw.
Pardoe and Shakova inspected the knife one more time, but they couldn’t figure out what material it was made from. They tried appraising it with magic, but only learned that it was imbued with the Goddess’ power and that it possessed an ability that made it an excellent kitchen knife.
“It’s a metal I’ve never seen before...”
“It’s stronger than steel... Crissa, are there any other knives in there?”
“There are plenty more in here, meow.” Crissa opened a drawer under the sink. Inside were about a dozen knives in a variety of shapes and siz
es.
“...Why are there so many?”
“Sir Touya said that they have different uses based on what they’re made to cut. See? This one is used to slice bread.” Crissa took out a knife with a strange wavy pattern lining its edge.
“Murrr...”
A cleaver, fillet knife, chef’s knife, and paring knife were among the collection of Eastern and Western kitchen knives, according to Touya. There was even a gigantic one called a whaling knife that they doubted should even belong in a kitchen.
As Pardoe and Shakova stared at the glimmering knives all lined up in a row, they got the idea to try and use this material for their smithing. They begged Touya to spare them a few, and he surprisingly said yes without hesitation. The knives were a part of his gift, so his MP would simply replenish any missing ones.
Once they gathered a whole set together, the knives lost the Goddess’ power, but were unchanged besides that. Pardoe and Shakova dragged Mark over and immediately activated the fire altar.
“Meow?! The heat does nothing to it...!!”
However, the knives remained unchanged even when applying heat from the fire altar to them. This was an unexpected development.
“Mark, generate more heat!”
“I-Is that okay?”
“It’s fine, just do it!”
“Don’t blame me if anything goes wrong!” Mark increased the altar’s output as he was told.
The fire altar and fire stone glowed with the brightest light they had ever seen, and Mark grimaced when he felt the heat catching bits of his whiskers as he applied the heat to the knives. Steel would have melted long ago at this temperature.
“No good, the knife’s not mewtating at all...!”
“We can’t say that for sure... let’s try hitting it meow!!”
Shakova used tongs to transport the knife to an anvil, then Pardoe swung down on it with all his might using his hammer. And then with an unexpectedly high-pitched ring, the knife split right in two.
“...What?”
The three of them opened their eyes wide, stopped channeling their MP, and stood there frozen until Crissa came by to tell them dinner was ready.
“It’s heat resistant, but breaks when you hit it... oh, maybe because they’re ceramic knives?” After dinner, Touya revealed the secret behind the knives to them. Since they were formed from his gift, he could tell what they were made from just like how he knew how to use his gift.
“If you had told me you wanted to try melting them, I could have let you know that they were similar to porcelain.”
“Th-that was porcelain...?”
No wonder they hadn’t seen anything like it before. It wasn’t even metal in the first place.
“They’re light, incredibly sharp, don’t rust, and don’t impart the taste of metal, but in exchange they’re really brittle and break as soon as you try to bend them.”
The broken knife ended up disappearing, too. The MP-generated soap would also vanish without a trace after it was used, so it operated on the same idea.
“And here I thought we could make an amazing weapon by melting up a bunch of these knives...”
“I thought I could put some detailed touches on it...”
“Well, there’s a catch to everything.”
At that, Pardoe and Shakova fell to the ground. Their quest had unfortunately ended in failure.
Afterwards, they gifted a full set of regenerated knives to the Hephaestus royal family. Of course, they also included warnings about using them.
The royal family was overjoyed since the knives had been formed from the Goddess of Fire’s blessing. They distributed the knives between the fire temple, the twelve ketolt families, and notable human blacksmith families as ritual tools. This helped cement Touya’s relationship with Hephaestus even more, but that was a story for another day.
Post-Bath – The Author’s Booth
Long time no see to everyone coming from volumes one and two, and nice to meet you to everyone who picked this title up starting from volume three! My name is Nagaharu Hibihana.
How did you enjoy Mixed Bathing in a Another Dimension 3: The Chaotic Stone Sauna? It’s all thanks to your support that this volume is in front of you now. I’d like to thank Masakage Hagiya, who illustrated some wonderfully exciting bath scenes again, my editor K, the editorial department at Overlap Bunko, and everyone who was involved in the publishing and selling of this book.
Now then, excuse me for rambling about my personal life, but I found something interesting when cleaning out my closet recently. I opened up a box and found over a dozen old games inside.
NES games? No, I’ve kept those in another box close to me for years. The NE-101 is still plugged in at my house. Though the battery in my Meg*mi Te**ei II cartridge just recently died.
Anyway, those were actually MSX games inside that box. I remember being jealous at my cousin for having an MSX and begging my parents to buy one for me. I want to try playing Buta**ru Pants again, but I bet I can’t find a working console in this day and age.
This might be a nice and nostalgic story if I ended it here, but I found one slightly more problematic thing in that closet. Yes, I found manga that I had drawn back in elementary and middle school.
The rest of you older folks might relate, but my past was coming back to haunt me! So I thought, and then I slowly opened that scary box with my heart pounding. But then when I actually looked through the contents, I was surprisingly okay. I even figured I could use some of these ideas if I restructured them a bit. And then I realized... have I not matured one bit in all these years?
Maybe I’m still a kid at heart, but I hope to see you all again in Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension volume 4. Please pick it up when you have the chance.
Nagaharu Hibihana, November 2015.
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Copyright
Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension: The Chaotic Stone Sauna
by Nagaharu Hibihana
Translated by Sophie Guo
Edited by C. Vanstiphout
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Nagaharu Hibihana
Illustrations Copyright © 2015 Masakage Hagiya
Cover illustration by Masakage Hagiya
All rights reserved.
Original Japanese edition published in 2015 by OVERLAP, Inc.
This English edition is published by arrangement with OVERLAP, Inc., Tokyo
English translation © 2017 J-Novel Club LLC
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property.
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The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Ebook edition 1.0: May 2017
The Chaotic Stone Sauna Page 21